To support our advocacy work on concrete legislative proposals and recommendations, we collaborate with partners from the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia to prepare and publish reports, case studies, data analyses, and examples of international best practices.
Duration: 1 August 2014 – 31 March 2016
The project aimed at monitoring and evaluation of enforcement of anti-corruption policies and legislation in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia, in four thematic areas relevant to the prevention of political corruption and misuse of public funds:
As part of the project, we analyzed and identified weaknesses in the national anti-corruption legislation, its implementation, and practice in these four areas, and formulated recommendations for the three member states on the basis of our own data and findings as well as international standards and good practice:
Partners:
Co-funded by the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme of the European Union.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Supported in part by a grant from the Foundation Open Society Institute in cooperation with the Think Tank Fund of the Open Society Foundations.
Duration: 1 December 2012 – 31 July 2014
The project’s long-term goal was to build the capacity of front-line national and EU level civil society organisations (watchdogs) by networking and sharing their know-how, and thereby contributing to a more coordinated and efficient fight against political corruption and misuse of public funds within the EU. Specific project objectives included:
Comparative study: Public money and corruption risks
The study compares Czech, Polish, and Slovak regulations and practice, identifying major gaps both in the national and EU legal framework that fundamentally increase the risk of political corruption and mismanagement of EU funds. The report results from a year-long research by local teams of lawyers, economists and political analysts, and “shadows” the first EU Anti-corruption report published in early 2014. Analyzing major risks of political corruption in the management of public funds, the study sheds light on why millions of euros continue to be misused and why implementation of EU funds regularly ends up in criminal prosecution in all three studied countries. It concludes that European Commission and the three studied member states were ineffective in regulating anonymous and offshore recipients of funds and allowed management and oversight of the programs to be riddled with political conflicts of interest. The report includes a number of concrete examples from all three Member States and offers a set of recommendations for both national and EU level decision-makers. Read more about the study findings.
Read the full report: Public money and corruption risks
Other selected project outputs:
Partners:
With the financial support of the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme European Commission - Directorate-General Home Affairs.
The project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
The project was supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.
Prague Municipal Court ruled today in favour better protection of human health from air pollution in the capital of the Czech Republic. The Court revoked most of Prague's Air Quality Management Plan, issued in 2016 by the Czech Ministry of Environment.
Czech Supreme Administrative Court ruled yesterday in favour of air quality and protection of human health. In the case local citizens and an NGO from Ostrava agglomeration, the most polluted region in the Czech Republic, succeeded with their claim for better air quality.
Yesterday, on 5 November 2018, a lawsuit against the Ministry of the Environment (MoE) on liability for health damages and death of her husband from lung cancer was filed with the District Court in Prague 10. The plaintiff seeks damages for lung cancer, which she has managed to cure, but her husband has succumbed to the illness in October. The cause of the disease is seen in the long-term excessive concentration of air pollutants at their place of residence in Ostrava-Radvanice and in the fact that the MoE failed to provide effective measures to decrease the pollution to legal limit values.